If you're worried that ER docs will hold a garage sale instead of trying to save your life if you sign up to become a donor, don't.

John L. Micek

Bernie Readingersells real estate in Hershey. He’s a slim guy just shy of 60 with gray hair that’s cut close to his head. He plays full-court basketball and gets in the odd round of golf.

And if it weren’t for the kindness of a sister who stepped up in 2006 and gave him a new kidney when his was failing, he wouldn’t be doing any of that right now.

But others aren’t so lucky. Roughly 6,000 people statewide are waiting for lifesaving transplant operations. The bulk of them, like Readinger once was, are waiting for new kidneys.

The great irony is that, while nine in 10 Pennsylvanians think donating organs is a great idea, only half that number, 45 percent, have an organ-donor designation on their drivers’ licenses.

Next week, a group called Donate Life PA will launch a statewide effort to boost the ranks of organ donors to 48 percent of drivers – an increase of about 200,000 people, said Steve Aaron, a Harrisburg public relations executive who's lending a hand on the campaign.

The outreach effort formally launches May 9 with a news conference at the state Capitol and a new website goes live that same day. The group is also using Web videos to tell the stories of people have benefited or stand to benefit from what organizers say is the 30 seconds it takes to jump online to become a donor.

Here's one of them:

“We’re driving a sense of urgency,” said John Green of the Philadelphia-based Gift of Life Donor Program, one of two groups statewide that matches patients with available organs.

That’s where Readinger comes in. If you’re looking for a compelling argument for becoming a donor, his is right up there.

Readinger’s four-hour kidney transplant operation in August 2006 came at the tail end of a long road that began in the early 1990s. That’s when a routine doctor’s visit led to a grim diagnosis.

Readinger had kidney disease. It wasn’t long, he said, before he went on a donor list and began a grueling dialysis regimen that included four or five treatments a day.

“My life became dialysis,” Readinger said during an interview with the PennLive/Patriot-News editorial board this week.

In May 1996, he had his first transplant. And in an odd twist of fate, the donated organ came from a young man whom Readinger had once mentored in a church youth group. The young man died after a drunken round of Russian roulette went horribly wrong.

“The kidney worked fine for eight years,” he recalled. But it, too, began to fail. And he went back onto dialysis again. It was the start of a two-year wait for a new kidney.

The search for a donor began. His wife and kids were incompatible. But his younger sister was a perfect match.

“It was like we were twins,” he said.

In August 2006, he underwent another transplant and he hasn’t looked back.

“I’ll be 60 next month,” he said. “I’ve never felt this good.”

Just about anyone can sign up to become a donor. And there’s a multiplier effect. Donated organs from one person can be used to help save as many as eight lives, Green said.

But if you’re worried that emergency room physicians will hold a garage with your organs sale instead of trying to save your life if you sign up to become a donor – rest easy.

That’s a stubborn urban myth. And Green says his group is trying to do everything it can to dispel it.

Other misconceptions – that those older than 50 can’t be donors or that certain religions have rules against it – are also a part of the new public education push. In case you were wondering, the answer to both is “no” and “no.”

“Our oldest donor was 84,” Green said.

In general, major organs such as the heart, lungs and liver that come from deceased donors have to come from someone who was breathing on a ventilator at the time of death. That’s because oxygen and blood had to be flowing for the organs to remain viable.

If a person isn’t on a ventilator when he or she dies, they can also be tissue donors, with heart valves and corneas going to people who need them.

Such was the case when my father died in 2009. His corneas went to a person in the Boston area, my mother, sister and I later learned.

But hospitals are seeing an increase in living donors. It’s possible, for instance, for a person to get by on just one kidney – as was the case with Readinger’s younger sibling.

I’ve been an organ donor for years. And my conversation with Green, Readinger and Aaron put a lot of my reservations to rest.

So if anything was holding you back from becoming a donor, here’s your chance to learn more and make up your own mind.